Who Broke the Mechanic?
The tension of feasibility concentrates on the logistical issues of mechanic design in Guild games. Even if they know that they can implement a mechanic, however, experienced GMs spend a lot of time and effort ensuring that their mechanics adequately serve the function of providing and encouraging a range of desirable interactions in the game. The word “broken� describes any poorly executed mechanic or suite of mechanics that results in a noticeable combination of unentertaining, unfulfilling or unbalanced game play. Broken mechanics deprive a player of the ability to make meaningful and entertaining choices about their character’s activities in the game world. When players describe a mechanic as “broken,� they believe that the problems of the mechanic arise from the items, rules and sheets provided by the GMs at the beginning of the game.
Guild writers realize, though, that the players’ interpretation and execution of the letter of the rules have an equally strong impact on the effectiveness of game mechanics. Thus, GMs that design game mechanics with the audience in mind have a much lower chance of being considered broken. In the MIT Assassins’ Guild, GMs occasionally refer to four unofficial tests that are named after specific members of the MIT Assassins’ Guild, as those players are known to break mechanics due to their styles of gaming. I have reworded them to hint at the underlying tensions beneath the tests:
- Can players gather more information than they should reasonably have, allowing them to succeed in their goals (or solve everybody else’s) by simplifying the major tasks in a game to a series of logical optimizations?
- Given that Guild games are played in a real social circle with real people, will players who get too excited or identify too closely with their characters produce undesirable interpersonal interactions?
- Conversely, is there a good reason to discourage players from “breaking their characters� in order to gain competitive advantages over other players? Are there ways to reinforce the illusion of the game world and characters?
- Given that games are competitive and that the rules governing competition can be complicated, can inexperienced or flustered players still grasp the mechanics of the game and make compelling, logical and strategic choices towards success?
Although an experienced GM team can skirt some of the shortcomings of their mechanics through careful casting, a GM team that completely ignores these tests will probably end up with broken mechanics. The desire to produce mechanics that can satisfy the different tests can be described as the tensions of Information, Dissociation, Verisimilitude and Competition, respectively. The rest of this thesis will look at these tensions and some of the more solutions used to fulfill those requirements.
